Monday, January 22, 2018

It's been a while since I've posted such high falootin' literature that your MOMA stained eyeglasses could gaze upon with your fine erudite sensibilities. And it will be a while longer. Today I present you with The Adventures of Pussycat published by Marvel in 1968. This was a one-shot collection of stories that appeared previously in Martin Goodman's (Goodman was the founder and publisher of Marvel) men magazines from 1965-1968. The series began in Male Annual #3 (1965) with art by Wally Wood and Jim Mooney, which is reprinted below. The series began as a parody of the popular spy genre and was influenced by Harvey Kurtzman's and Will Elder's Little Annie Fanny that had recently begun over in Playboy. As far as I can tell, the series ran in various men's magazines from 1965 up until 1972. The cover below was painted by the great Bill Everett, although not so great here. The stories below contain work by Wally Wood, Jim Mooney, and Bill Ward. Though not the best work any of these gents have been involved in (although Bill Ward's work is pretty great here), it's still an interesting sidenote to their careers as well as the 60's spy genre. Oh, and it's sexist as shit, so there's that bit of troublesome history.